Promises
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Derek, please," Kyle whines, his voice desperate. "Can’t we just go home? I want mom."


Author's note: Unbetaed. In fact, pretty much written straight to my Live Journal. I don't even know where this came from.

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He shivers, chilled to the bone, though the evening is warm for April. Of course it's warm. How could it not be? Everything is burning. Burning or already turned into so much ash. Clouds of heat and ash drift in the air, giving everything a surreal feeling, making it hard to breathe.

As if on cue, the little boy by his side begins to cough again, the sound wrenching, the coughs torn from him so violently that he is almost afraid that his little brother will be torn in two by their force. Almost afraid. Almost. A small part of him thinks that maybe it would be better that way.

Just this morning he'd gotten up, taken a quick shower (something he never used to do unless his mom had hounded him into it, but that was before he'd started noticing the girls in his class and before they'd started noticing him), grabbed a banana and headed out the door to school. There was a test – geography – but he hadn't worried about it. In fact, he was pretty sure he'd aced it. Not that any of that matters now.

Beside him, Kyle quiets. Perversely, Derek feels that tickle at the back of his throat that says he's about to have a coughing attack of his own. He tries to stifle the urge when Kyle settles in against him, slowly becoming boneless as only a seven-year-old can as he relaxes to the edge of sleep. Derek looks down at his brother, hair and skin covered in dust and streaky dirt and smears of soot. His vision blurs, turns watery, and he angrily dashes away the threatening tears. _Fuck!_ he thinks (just this morning, he wouldn't have even thought the word, his mother would have been so disappointed in him), _I am not going to cry. Fuck!_

He loses the fight against that dusty cough, waking Kyle, who jumps and turns to him, eyes wide and terrified. "Derek!"

Derek holds up one hand and coughs into the other, coughs so hard that there are little red and white lights at the edges of his vision. Closing his eyes, coughing still, he pounds a fist hard into his thigh, once, twice. Through sheer force of will, he swallows the next cough while his frightened little brother shouts his name, tears adding more streaks to all the crap on his face. _Mom'll kill me if I don't get him cleaned up._

"Derek!"

"Hush, Kyle." His throat feels raw. "I'm okay."

"I want to go home."

"We can't." Derek scrubs a hand over his face, which feels gritty, and he knows there's just as much crap on his own face as there is on Kyle's. And their mom isn't going to do anything about it.

"I want to go home, Derek."

Their dad isn't going to do anything about it, either.

"Derek, please," Kyle whines, his voice desperate. "Can't we just go home? I want mom."

Kyle grabs his hand and tugs; Derek jerks violently away. "I want mom, too, but she's gone." The tears threaten again and he wants to punch something.

"Where did she go?" Kyle's voice is a little stronger. "When is she coming home? I wanna go home." The kid's stubborn streak is kicking in, combining with his fear, heading toward a full-blown tantrum. "Why can't we go home?"

"Because home is gone! Mom's dead, Kyle. Dad's dead! Everyone's fucking dead!" Which shuts Kyle up, but not in a good way.

His face turns white, his lip quivers, and he begins to shake, clearly visible even in the semi-darkness of a night lit by the smoldering fires of what was once a city. Derek pounds a fist into his thigh again. _Dammit!_

He grabs hold of his brother's hand and pulls him in close, wraps his arms around the kid's thin shoulders. Kyle buries his face in Derek's neck and sobs, loud and messy. Derek rests his head on his brother's dirty hair. "I'm sorry, Kyle. I didn't mean to yell at you." Kyle sobs harder, clutching his hands in Derek's shirt. "We'll be okay. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, I swear." He plants a quick kiss in Kyle's hair. "I promise, I'll take care of you."

_But who's going to take care of me?_


End file.
